Increased productivity, improved efficiency and response times are some of the important benefits of wireless solutions. But to ensure cost control and security a formal mobility policy is crucial for any organization.

To ensure that policies will be effective, consider the following tips:

Policies should never be written in isolation, the people who are asked to use or enforce them may have differing opinions. A sole policy writer may also neglect things that are important to others. This is not to be taken lightly: enterprises need to get the right people involved, and should include as many people and groups as is practical.

Consider a usage policy per user group, enterprises should focus first on the target audience for mobile solutions, and second on what are the most appropriate and beneficial applications to a particular user group. The following three questions for mobility are important:

1. Who should have a device?
2. What applications should be mobilized?
3. What device platforms should be mobilized?

Insight into employee user costs, make sure you have insight into telecom costs across the organization and have the possibility to track policy compliance. Insight into telecom costs is not only important for management but also for individuals to be aware of their personal costs as it significantly raises cost awareness.

Management buy-in, management should enforce and buy into policies or the implementation of them may be adversely affected. Managers should be careful not to use their own handheld devices in ways that contravene policies, and they should demonstrate that adhering to policies is an issue they take seriously.

After you have defined a wireless policy, the implementation can start and in this phase it is crucial that employees know the policy and understand it. Training on the policy should also be part of the new hires’ orientation and periodic newsletters, workshops, or seminars can help explain the policy.

After employees are informed and can expect to comply to the corporate policies the organization should have the tooling in place to track policy compliance. Telecom Expense Management services are useful as they do not only help to gain insight into telecom costs it also helps to automate policy compliance through the implementation of business rules.
Mobile technology is rapidly changing therefore it is especially important to review and update the telecom policy every 12 months.

For more information also check out our webinar slides on developing an effective mobile policy

Shocking results!

These results provide important insights into the real-world experiences of mobile customers. Operators can do much more than they are currently doing to help customers avoid unexpected fees.

In Europe (European Union) mobile data roaming will be cut off at €50 and users will receive a warning when they reach 80% of the chosen limit. These measures were taken after enormous media exposure to “Bill Shocks” with a German traveler running up a €46.000 bill while downloading a movie in France. The typical operator response has been “tough luck” and please pay your bill as the operator has to pay the roaming operator. The EU has also taken an active role in regulating and reducing the cost of mobile voice and texting while in roaming, and addressing operator practices of “per minute billing” and “start fees”. More info at http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/10/215

The European reality has been that the cost of mobile roaming or international calls has moved away from the EU to North America, Middle East, India and China (See Ezwim Telecom Monitor, http://www.ezwim.com/news/ezwim-telecom-monitor-2008 ). So the question becomes what can operators or regulators do beyond the EU border? The EU could consider to have this topic included as part of their bi-lateral trade agreements or through the WTO (The world is flat…isn’t it?), and nothing stops operators to have a “cap” or “cut off” mechanism in non EU countries . Technically this is a matter of treating post-paid subscribers as if they were “pre-paid” subscribers when in roaming, this forces all calls to contact the home operator (HLR/VLR) and allows for setting a “wallet” against this service.

The research is about consumers, not businesses. However businesses generally have multiple service providers and contracts in multiple regions so the risk of experiencing Bill Shock is even higher than for customers. The highest shock bill we have seen at Ezwim was €32.000 when one of our clients was using Skype for calls (and listening to radio) while being Bahrain. Mobile data cost ~€5 per MB in Bahrain and Skype uses around 55 kB/sec.

This reality demonstrates the need for Telecom Management solutions; systematically and proactively managing telecom will almost certainly lead to more control on telecom costs and better services. It also shows the need for integrating Telecom Management solutions, like Ezwim, with Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions…..MDM provides the ability for real time call and data logging, Ezwim can use this data for real time forecasting or calculating the cost per call or data session.

This is a blog, so I’ll do my best to get to the point (sorry I am Latin and it is not our forte). My experience is that the challenge is often times the client itself and the battles within their organizations. Also, the large TEM providers recognized the money in the Fortune Sector, and the software is mostly adapted to the huge US sizes, complexities and expectations. However, the world of such companies and many smaller companies is built on years of “geographical and class segregation” across entities and divisions to the point that they look like the European Community, supposedly united but with multiple countries each doing their thing, with their own budgets, mindsets, emergencies, issues, controls and priorities; which happen not to be those of the European Council.

So, uniting a global corporation under the umbrella of “global TEM” requires in my humble opinion a very unique process and methodology. I can speak to this because we have spent 3 years developing such methodology and have had the unique opportunity to reflect and practice much of what I predicate on:

• Global but fragmented – and rebellious
• Nice objective — but please politics and medals are first I decide, but you have to pay for it!

The next wave of global TEM is from Complexity to Simplicity: A large global firm recently made a choice to move from the “Cadillac” to the “Camry deluxe”. I call it the “Cadillac” ( no offense intended) because it has too many , generally useless, features and too many buttons for the poor folks that need to use them.

One of my beloved clients – Applica Consumer Products (owns Black and Decker and other brands) even has been migrated by us to the “Camry”. And is happy enough with the weekly report providing a dashboard of all activity, budget, processed stuff and status of things and don’t even play with the software. Why? Simple. They don’t have the time. Please Hide all the bells and whistles. They look fantastic on the webex tm until you have to fill all of them daily yourselves with largely useless information as far a savings , visibility and control is concerned. SIMPLE please!

Mobile versus fixed: On a global scale, save a few companies, the vast majority of companies have a good grasp on their fixed assets, and more and more mobile services account for a larger portion and represents a more complex management challenge for its inherent type of service. Random subscriptions, employee dynamic, user facing services, etc. So mobile is the priority for “application based services with BASIC fixed line management”

Global versus local: the key word here is shared services. The methodology we have thought out seeks to service at the same time Local, Regional and Global management simultaneously, and providing to each one or obtaining from each one what is required. If this is not accomplished like this, sponsorship and success to the adoption are a nightmare at best. A formula must be worked out so each country can do their thing and corporate/headquarter also benefits.

I worked as consultant to a Fortune 50 I won’t name for confidentiality reasons but mostly to save them the embarrassment. After countless meetings at corporate in USA and RFI and RFP and interviews with everyone, they take us to their Latin-American HQ. Surprise , surprise, the Latin-American HQ says: “Well, corporate needs this as they are complex and a mess, but we here know exactly where we stand. We would love to do the cell phones in the region but:

• we don’t have “one person”. In charge . Responsibility is spread across business units
• is corporate paying for this? I don’t have budget
• so on..

In summary, to succeed at a global implementation:

Keep it simple, with simple applications with global ability; Make sure you acquire or develop predefined methodologies for collecting initially and aggregating all data about infrastructure, processes , expenses, providers, and users within company so you can inventory your multiple processes and other factors affecting expectations; Methodology for inserting AND SHARING services within a CORPORATION; Plan for actionable data and being willing to act and assimilate the consequences of findings; Track, measure and report everything you find and fix from day ONE.

Fantastic news for operators?

Not completely as a recent study carried out on 1,000 UK customer claims that the strong uptake of smartphones threatens to damage the profitability of operators.  The combination of expensive subsidies, flat rate data tariffs, complex service set-up and the high cost to support means that it can take up to 16 months for an operator to breakeven on every new smartphone user.

Almost a third of consumers experience difficulty setting up email and 21% struggles to set up internet on their device. Customers need help and the operator is spending a lot of time and money supporting the customers as resolving smartphone issues takes on average 30% longer than with feature phones. A large group is struggeling with the advanced functionality of the smartphone and is defaulting back to the more familiar voice and SMS phone. Operator’s margins can quickly erode because of these factors.

So what’s next for the operators and what is their plan to increase profits? I my opinion the device manufacturers and operators need to design their products and services around the end-user. Making the products and services easy to use for their customers, question is if they have the capability and competence to turn this into reality……

Source

There is a lot of talk about Mobile Device Management (MDM) and its big promise to enterprises of centrally distributing applications, data and configuration settings to mobile devices. MDM services have incredible potential and deliver great value to IT department as it provides centralized application and hardware resource control. The control is effected by remote or over-the-air capabilities. It helps IT departments to optimize functionality and security and minimize (support) cost and downtime.

So yes it provides great value but does this all sound too good to be true? To a certain extend it does as there are some important “challenges”  to overcome before MDM will be ready for mass market adoption. The current high Total Cost of Ownership being a very important one, as enterprises will be hesitant to pay a high monthly cost per user/device. Also the user Experience is not always positive…..battery drains, difficult to set-up, device locks,…etc. And what about keeping up with the ever changing landscape of Device Operating Systems and Device (Configurations).

It will take time and hard work from many market players to overcome the challenges, also because the MDM market is still relatively untested and uneducated..  For the near future I expect Telecom Expense Management (TEM) Services to be combined with MDM. It will provide a powerful combination and provides strong value to IT department as it finally offers:

• Real time cost control – enabling controlling costs when they are actually made –
• Policy management…..e.g. block 0800 service numbers, this roaming call cost $4.25, automatic selection of preferred network, white and black list of applications etc.
• Fully automated Asset and Inventory Management and more real-time insight…..which user is using how much mobile data with which application, what are the most used applications.

Over time TEM and MDM will be an integrated offer and provides a powerful combination making life easier for enterprise IT departments to control cost and improve service management.

Recent research shows that two in three European companies have no clue what and how much corporate data is housed on employees’ mobile devices. Of those surveyed, two in three companies said they are not fully aware of exactly what sensitive data is stored on employees’ mobile devices and—perhaps more troubling—38 percent said they don’t even know what applications are being run by employees on their smartphones. Moreover, only 15 percent of respondents said that they are “completely confident” that they would be legally protected should an employee’s mobile device be lost or stolen and whatever data contained on the device fell in the wrong person’s or organization’s hands.

Troubling figures…. Smartphones keep employees connected to their work however from a security standpoint, this disconnect poses significant problems for companies that are torn between empowering their employees and locking down the sensitive data they must exchange to do their jobs. In addition to the corporate data there is a lot of valuable personal data on the employee mobile device (pictures, videos, applications, ringtones, personal address book,..) as lines have blurred between the professional and personal life. Employees will back-up this data locally on their computer or somewhere in the “cloud”, posing an even more challenging situation from a security standpoint. Throw in the mix the adoption of (mobile) applications, with the Apple Appstore leading the way in the enterprise/professional world, and the cost of transmission not being free (at best fair usage or roaming fees)….the situation becomes even more critical to resolve. Ignoring the challenge is not an option for most enterprises.

How to deal with this situation?

One could take a classical Strategy Planning Process and move in a top-down approach from objectives, situation analysis all the way to implementation and control. Personally I would go first for a quick-and-dirty baseline bottom-up assessment by using Mobile Device Management (MDM) tools to make an inventory of device-side data, applications being used, which data is being stored outside of the enterprise domain, and trying to investigate/understand (surveys) end user behavior/needs/trends. This data allows for insight on adoption within the enterprise, risk analysis, and future direction and needs. From this point on one can be an informed decision on what to do next and how to do it…….

Comprehensive telecom expense management (TEM) solutions have been shown to be highly effective in reducing telecom costs, generating strong ROI and paying for themselves in less than one year of operation. An automated invoice management system will generate hard dollar savings and productivity gains.

The value of reviewing invoices for accuracy before paying them is easy to appreciate. But for organizations that receive hundreds or thousands of telecom invoices every month, manually validating every charge on every invoice is a time-consuming and costly process. Whether deployed as an on-premise or outsourced solution, an effective TEM invoice management program includes four essential components: electronic invoice processing, invoice validation, dispute management, and contract negotiation.

Electronic invoice processing

Invoice management solutions are effective to the degree that the data is made available in electronic form. Invoices received in electronic form can be processed more rapidly, accurately, and at lower cost than paper invoices. Electronic invoices can also provide levels of detail that are critical for thorough and accurate analysis, validation, and allocation.

Invoice validation

To fully verify the accuracy of invoices, charges must be validated against three criteria:

• Usage – Were the services billed for actually consumed? Call accounting systems collect Call Detail Record (CDR) data off the telecom switch that can be used to validate costs. Wireless services do not provide this kind of activity log and are typically validated against charge thresholds.
• Contract terms and company policies – Rates applied to delivered services, as well as taxes and other charges, should be validated against terms defined in the carrier contract. Charged activity should also be checked against company policies governing appropriate use.
• Inventory and MACDs – The inventory of services in effect and the technology deployed are constantly changing. Invoices from telecom providers must be validated against what is essentially a moving target.

Dispute management

An automated dispute management system can help you quickly and efficiently work with carriers to achieve credits and/or corrections for discrepancies identified during the invoice validation process. Best-in-class dispute management systems include an automated workflow component that provides full lifecycle tracking of the disputed charges, including disposition, amount recovered, important dates, and more. Invoices with disputed charges can be paid in full with disputes or short paid.

Contract negotiation and optimization

Negotiating favorable rates and selecting service plans that match usage needs are powerful ways to reduce telecom spend. The spend and usage data collected for other invoice management efforts provides valuable insight that can be leveraged to reduce present and future telecom spend. Data gathered from invoice processing reveals how your organization actually uses telecom services, arming you with the information you need to negotiate the most favorable carrier contracts and wireless plans. Invoice management solutions with spend analytics capabilities can help you analyze this information and project future requirements and costs. Armed with this information, you can enter negotiations knowing exactly what you need, and what you can afford to leave on the table. You will be able to make informed decisions that result in significant cost reductions – such as moving to pooled plans or limited wireless data services – without jeopardizing overall quality of service.

Hard dollar savings and more

An invoice management system encompassing electronic processing, invoice validation, dispute management, and contract negotiation can generate immediate hard dollar savings, such as elimination of overcharges, as well as long-term savings resulting from stronger contract negotiation and compliance. Invoice management helps organizations understand and control their telecom usage and spend.

Reducing Telecom Costs: Why Invoice Management is the Best Place to Start
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• TEM services continue to be popular among enterprises as they are eager to reduce telecom expenses.
• The market for global capabilities is maturing – ahead of Gartner predictions.
• Demand in Europe is growing ; although the market is a couple of years behind the US, Gartner expects that 2009 and 2010 will be breakout years, as companies based in Western Europe start to adopt TEM services in greater numbers.

The US is still dominating the TEM space; this is also reflected by the providers reviewed in the research as almost 75% of the profiled TEM players are based in the USA.

Link to research http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?id=1032315&ref=g_fromdoc

Key facts:

• Telecom costs continue to rise with an increase of 2,5% in 2008 compared to 2007
  • Strong increase in purchase of flat-fee bundles for both voice and mobile data
  • Data cost category continues to grow while smart phones become more popular
  • Number of mobile devices increase by 13%
• Private use of corporate mobiles is common
  • 28% of call costs are private
  • Holiday destinations are top roaming countries in July & August\
  • New Year’s Day and Bloody Friday (global stock exchange decline) are top days for SMS volume
• Regional Differences
  • Roaming continues to represent an important cost consisting 24-28% of the telecom cost in European countries, whereas USA is only 13%;
  • SMS and Service Numbers (Voicemail, Number Information) are most popular in the USA and UK, when compared to European continental countries (Germany, Netherlands).

Find all results here: http://www.ezwim.com/news/ezwim-telecom-monitor-2008

My take:

• Mobile/wireless cost are still on the rise;
• Enterprises follow the trends in the consumer markets; flat fee voice & data bundles grow strongly in popularity;
• Strong growth of mobile data usage are pushed by private usage; mobile data is being used, next to corporate email for downloading music, keeping in touch with social network and using YouTube, Twitter, MSN etc.

What to do?

• Get insight into what you spend and how you are spending it on a global level;
• Increase end user awareness of their private usage and make them responsible of their own private costs (private/business cost allocation), and create clear policies;
• Centralize cost and service management globally and automate the processes (Install, Move, Add, Change) with your service provider.

Is this a big surprise?  No!

As long as device manufacturers have a strategy of competing on design and providing consumers a Swiss Knife-like device (Technology/Feature push) to keep their Average Sales Price (ASP) high without developing an end-to-end service (device, software, network) with the end user in mind (only most relevant features, take away comlexity). Likewise most operators are deploying MDM tools, with a focus of firmware updates (>200 software bugs per launched device) and pushing the right network settings, to keep connectivity/data revenues going.

Basically the device manufacturers and operators need to change their business model from a technology/infrastructure push to an end-to-end service designed around the end-user. Both Blackberry and Apple have already provided the proof points that this is the way to go.

Question will be whether the device manufacturers and operators have the capability and competence to make this change over time…..

http://www.mformation.com/mformation-news/press-releases/95percent-of-mobile-users-would-use-more-data-services-if-setup-were-easier